Nightmare 8.28.14

Note:  I was going to title this post "What's in a Dream" but realized as I  started to type that this was really more of a nightmare and one full of symbolism and snatches of my reality and what's going on in the world at present.  I'll have to  ponder this one for a while.  

Mrs. B

I approach the door of my family home.  As it opens, I see that another family is living there, and a family that is not supposed to be there at that.  For lack of better term, I’ll refer to them as a terrorist family.  There is definitely something ominous about their presence.  Snaky.  Oily.  Over perfumed.  Threatening.  As I stand in the doorway, the male of the house, I presume the father figure, gestures me in.  There is a dog standing nearby, not my dog but some sort of standard poodle thing; not my favorite dog at all.  I look around and spot my dog, my Lucy; off in a corner.  She looks decidedly miserable; downtrodden, beaten; probably literally.  She is mangy looking and, pathetically, chews on an old stick.  I wonder where all of her toys are; her bunny, her squirrel, her hedgehog, her flea?  She sees me and her tail starts to thump on the floor.  With some show of her usual enthusiasm, she jumps up and races over to me.  As she approaches, the slimy man yells harshly at her and she cowers.  My heart breaks.  She tries to slink towards me but he keeps her from getting close to me.  He starts to take his belt off and holds it menacingly in his hands saying, “I guess it is time to really show this dog who the master is.” I begin to protest, fear rising inside of me as I anticipate what this man is going to do to my dog.  He moves towards her and I splay my hands out in a pleading manner, asking him to please leave my dog alone; to just let me take her away and she’ll be no more trouble to him.  I have no thought, really, for the house, or its contents; only to save my dog.  After some time of this, an achingly long moment when I wonder if he’ll insist on dragging her outside where I’m sure he’ll beat her to death, he, amazingly, relents.  But, there is a condition; I am to take her away, yes; but I must come back within a few days with some amount of money, a staggering amount which I know I can never raise, and, worse, I know that this money will go towards something that is not good at all.  Yet, I agree, my only thoughts to get my dog out of that house and away from this horrible person.  As we walk together out of the house; me, my dog and this awful human being, I wonder how it is that we are in the cul de sac where I grew up; even as I recognized the house as my parent’s house in San Diego, I am startled that we are IN San Diego.  We walk towards the part of the cul de sac the leads to the primary artery street where my car is parked.  As we progress, the man reminds me of my duty.  We reach the car and I get Lucy settled in the passenger seat next to me; something I’d normally never do but I want her nearby.  She is so cowed and timid at this point, she hardly moves; just places her head onto her paws and regards me with eyes that express a combination of wariness and joy.  We drive away and I immediately begin to wonder how I can possibly raise money for whatever the man has in mind.

The scene switches, and I am in an apartment, I guess it’s mine, going through all of my things with an eye to keep only exactly what I need and to sell the rest; presumably to raise money to give to this man.  There is another woman there with me; I am unclear of her relationship to me but she looks an awful lot like the actress Scarlett Johansson.  As I go through my things, I notice several suitcases packed and standing off to the side.  She says, “I went ahead and selected a few things for me, as you told me I could.”  I nod, but stop and walk over to the bags.  I held up my brown leather satchel.  “You can’t have this one.  I need this one, and also the other valise you packed plus my red wheelie.  Any other suitcase you can have,” I tell her.   She says, “I didn’t know.”  I open up the bags to remove what she has packed in them so that I can take the empty bags for my own use.  I notice that she’s packed a lot of my slacks, a few sweaters, and, for some reason, the sock monkey slippers that my stepmother bought for me a few months before she died.  “You can’t have these,” I say, holding them up.  “They are the last things Margot bought for me before she died.” I tuck them away. I feel a sense of sadness of losing so many of my things but also realize that I don’t care all that much.

The scene switches again and I am back at the house.  This time, there is no family there; in fact, the place is deserted and nearly destroyed inside.  It is a wreck; furniture tossed to and fro, all of the food pulled out of the refrigerator and freezer and tossed in the backyard; some of it is floating in the swimming pool.  Although the people are gone, I still feel a sense of unease, a bit of desperation that they may return before I can get the place secured.  Mark is with me now; we begin together to sort the place out.  Although when I was there the first time; when I met the horrible man and saw Lucy I didn’t wonder about the cats, now I am concerned what happened to them as I see them nowhere.  I worry that that awful man did something to them but also believe that they were too wily for him.  As Mark cleans up inside, I go outside, thinking that perhaps they are out there.  After a few moments, I see one or two of them on the outskirts of the property, in the canyon.  After some time, I managed to coax them all inside the gate and into the backyard and get them into the house.  This is when I discover all of the meat we’d had stored in the freezer tossed around the backyard; expensive roasts, pounds of hamburger, steaks.  I wonder at this blatant disregard for food, for money; especially in light of the fact the man seemed to need and want money.

The scene switches yet again and I am in my familiar dream of being at an airport, being dropped off at the terminal, and being late for my flight.  I have to walk the long path to the check in counter, then the never ending walkway to the gate.  I’ve been in this place in my dreams so many times, it’s very familiar to me.  As with all the other times, I have a desperate sense of needing to get onto that plane so I can get away.  This time, there are two women with me, and they are exclaiming that there may be a problem with our three seats; that perhaps they’ve overbooked and we won’t be able to get on the plane after all.  I look at my ticket and see it’s a seat in first class.  I tell them there won’t be a problem, they never bump the folks in first class.

Where's My Phone?

Another excellent source of free-write fodder are dreams. I didn't sleep well last night and, as such, haven't had a lot of energy today. In between loads of laundry, I decided to take a quick cat nap. My sleep was once again fitful, resulting in this extremely creepy dream.

Mrs. B

I am by myself in what seems to be my mom and dad’s prior house in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. It’s that large in any case, with a similar layout, even if it is not the exact same house.

I wander downstairs to the basement area because I hear water dripping. Is it ever; it turns out that it is pouring out of the top of the bathroom door jamb! I cannot go into the bathroom that way, obviously, so I run around to another bathroom, getting totally drenched along the way. I stand there in abject frustration because I don’t know what to do about the water that is now all over the place. I run outside a sliding glass door and roam around the outside of the house muttering to myself, “What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to DO?” I’m irritated more than anything; where did my mother and sister go? Why did they leave me with this mess? As I go around the house, I notice that there is a small crowd of brightly dressed people mingling around what appears to be a Merry Go Round. They are, I see, decked out in costumes of a Renaissance-era sort. Some wear masks, some are small children.

I make my way back to the sliding glass door and step inside. All of a sudden, there is a man standing behind me, not quite through the sliding glass door. He is not the type of man you’d think to be frightened of, in fact, he looks quite silly. He is a bit rotund and he is dressed all in white; a basic men’s undershirt, BVDs and tube socks. He also has a white half mask a la the Phantom strapped on to his face. His hair is an unruly mop of sweaty blond curls. He has the overall demeanor of an overweight yet threatening ill-dressed cherub.

He says to me, genially enough, “Well, well, what is this all about?” but his actions are menacing as he pushes me away from the door and gains entry to the house. I see him looking about the basement area, glancing here and there as he draws the correct conclusion that I am alone in the house. I move away from him, intent on reaching the staircase before he realizes what I am up to. He notices a bed peeking out of the open door to one of the rooms and tries to steer me towards it. Knowing full well his intent, I start to call and whistle for my dog Lucy, who is slumbering somewhere upstairs.

“Lucy! Lucy!” I shout, then, give a weak whistle. “C’mon Lucy, come here!” He pauses, cocking his head, wondering, I am sure, whether there really IS a Lucy in the house. Apparently, he decides this is a ruse on my part as he begins in earnest to get me to the bedroom. I am wondering myself if Lucy is going to come save me when I finally hear the faint jingle of her tags. I keep calling as he keeps dragging. Finally, he hears her, too. He pauses again, pondering. This time, however, as Lucy comes clambering down the stairs, there is no question of her existence, and, with him not knowing what type of dog Lucy is, he thankfully, thankfully, decides to exit the house before making her acquaintance.

I meet Lucy half-way up the staircase. She continues on down into the room, her hackles obviously raised. I go on up up the stairs, calling her to me as I go, in a rush to get the door shut and locked.

After we are both in the hallway, I slam the door closed and fumble for the lock. To my dismay, the regular lock had vanished, replaced by one of those rattle trap and ineffective slide locks you sometimes encounter in the bathroom of a dive bar. Not only is the lock extremely shim-sham, I can’t figure out where the latch slides into the hole because there IS no matching hole in the adjoining wall. I try for a few moments to wedge it into the cement, but this was obviously a futile task.

Abandoning the lock and now even more frantic, I began searching for my cell phone so that I can call 911. I run from room to room, finding every other electrical device in the house but not my cell phone. I am thinking that I should have left Lucy down in the basement to deal with the caped cherub should he return when I stumble and fall, breaking off the right lens of my already fairly worthless glasses. For a moment, I stand in total despair, holding the broken lens in my hand. Shaking off the paralysis that threatens to keep me rooted to the spot, I take off once again in search of my elusive cell phone, calling “Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone?” over and over as I go.

A Dilly of a Nightmare with an Extra Scoop of Scary

I dream. A lot. Most often, my dreams are long and involved and continuous. Usually, I wake up able to remember a considerable amount of the dream. Almost always, there is some correlation between aspects of the dream and what is happening to me, or has happened, in my waking life.

Unfortunately, nightmares stick with me even more so than dreams.

Mr. B and I are on a cruise ship. There are initially scenes of us waiting in line to go on-board and then moments of us in our stateroom. The majority of it, though, is me walking around one deck of the ship; the deck that has the buffet at one end of it. I wander around and always end up entering the dining room/buffet area at the same place; where two women are sitting at a counter, each eating strange looking meat and cheese filled pasties. Each time I pop up, they glance up at me with some degree of irritation. The final time, I move on through the dining room and continue my circuit around the deck.

It is twilight, the glooming. I am now inside but can easily see the ocean from the many windows that line the part of the ship I am walking through. There are a lot of people crowded around the railing, leaning down and looking at something in the water. There are excited voices and pointing, "See that! See that! It's fins! There must be a dolphin down there!" I stop and watch the people at the railing. As I'm standing there, I, too, am able to see the fins; they appear to be rising up out of the water, as if whatever it is is attempting to reach up and say "Howdy, folks!"

Suddenly, the mood turns ominous. The fins are extremely large; much larger than what you'd see on a dolphin or porpoise. A sense of dread fills me as I watch a huge lump of something come up out of the water, totally level with the railing. It has a huge head and a snarling mouth with a ton of wicked looking teeth. As it propels itself alongside the railing, it takes out several of the people standing there. Most of them fall shrieking into the water below but a few end up flailing about in the creature's mouth.

All around me now is pandemonium. I turn and walk briskly back the way I'd come, going against what is now a large crowd of people coming my way; I am pushing, pushing to get away. I pull out my cell phone to call Mr. B, hoping he's somewhere very far away from this disaster.

I find an alcove where I can stop and punch in Mr. B's number. Initially, I am so scared I cannot control my fingers and I keep dialing the wrong number. Or, I get the number in and then inadvertently disconnect. This goes on for some time, with me getting more and more frustrated and panicked. I try to calm myself down, knowing that if I don't, I won't be able to make the call.

I continue to walk against the tide of people, looking down at the cell phone and trying to get the number in correctly. As I'm walking, I am startled by the fact that so many people don't seem to have any idea of the danger we are in. Bells sound that signal the Captain is about to make an announcement. Everyone around me keeps talking at a loud pitch, even when he starts to speak. I cannot understand what he is saying, but know it has to do with the monster that has attacked the ship. I shout at the people around me, "Shut up! Shut up! Be quiet! We need to hear what the Captain is SAYING!" but they look past me as if I'm not there.

I end up back in the dining room/buffet area but this time, since I've entered from the opposite direction, I do not disrupt the two ladies sitting at the counter. A server wanders by me with a tray. She stops and holds it out in front of me, inquiring if I'd like some shrimp; indeed, there is a small bowl of shrimp on her tray, along with a dish of cocktail sauce, toothpicks for spearing the shrimp, and a few napkins. Incredulous that she is offering me food given what I just saw, I stand there gaping at her. A man pushes up behind me and says, "Sure, I'll take some!" He reaches over with his fingers and grabs some shrimp. The server slaps his hand and says, "You're not supposed to use your bare fingers! Drop that and go wash your hands right now!" He slinks off, I head off in the other direction, still fumbling with my cell phone; trying to make that call to Mr. B.

After what seems like ages, I am finally successful in doing so. I hear the phone ringing, ringing, ringing, on the other end. I am praying it won't go into voice mail because I am not sure that I could punch the numbers in correctly again. Thankfully, he picks up, and I say, "Where are you? Where ARE you? I am on Deck Four, aft!"

The voice, when it answers, is not Mr. B, rather, it is my ex husband Mr. H. He replies, "Well, hey there, Aims, I'm on Deck Six so there's just one deck between us, isn't there?"

I shriek and hang up the phone. I try again and again to call and every time, my ex answers. This goes on for some time before I finally wake up.

I can do arm chair shrink like the next person; I can figure out what some of this means, certainly. However, this is not the first time my ex has made appearances in my dreams, continuing to masquerade as my husband, and I really don't understand why.

That's it. No moral or point to this entry today; just needed to get it out there because it is still so very vivid at almost 9:30 am. Perhaps sharing will help to disperse its creepy, bad-vibe vapors.

Mrs. B

What Dreams May Come

Dreams. Boy, do I ever have ‘em. I’m talking now about the ones that visit when you are asleep. It’s amazing to me how many people have told me that they either hardly ever dream or, even, NEVER dream. I must be getting all of their dreams, then.

Sometimes, I will have one extremely long dream that seems to last the entire time I’m asleep; even if I wake up and then fall back to sleep, the dream will pick up. Other times, I have a slew of seemingly random dreams, one after another after another. If I were to think about each one (assuming I could remember them all), I might be able to piece together a theme of sorts but usually there are a few that go by the wayside once I’ve regained consciousness and I can barely remember snippets (if that).

I have had dreams that I’ve never forgotten. I, like many people, have dreams of the reoccurring variety. I dream in color and my dreams have sound (e.g., I can hear people talking, music, birds chirping, water running, etc.) For the most part, my dreams are filled with people and places that I know/am familiar with, however, at times, I’ll dream of people I’ve never met in places I’ve never been. These are always fascinating to me; how did my mind make them up? Although, I did read once that your mind remembers every single person you’ve ever encountered in your life, whether that encounter be real (e.g., someone you passed walking down the street or a person standing behind you in a checkout line that you may have glimpsed if you turned your head around to look behind you) or through some sort of media (a secondary character in a movie or a guest star in a TV show). As for the places you dream of to which you’ve never actually been, I suppose that could be just good old fashioned imagination (or, scenes and/or sets from movies or T.V. shows).

I know that dreams can sometimes be nothing more than data dumps of things actually going on (if represented in an odder way than reality) in one’s life. Also, of course, there are symbolic dreams (these are the ones that are sometimes a challenge to figure out while other times, it’s pretty darn obvious).

My favorite dreams are when Nigel and Clyde “visit” me. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen so much now; I suppose it’s mostly because I don’t need their visits as often as I did when they first passed away.

Anyway, to illustrate, here is a synopsis of the dreams (those that I can remember) from last night (which happened to be one of the “slew of dreams” evenings) and my attempt at analysis (in bold):

1. I’m standing in a barber shop watching a tall, pale extremely handsome (in a Nordic way) blond man getting his hair cut. At the moment, his hair is longish and somewhat shapeless. He is telling the barber that he wants it cut off just so (he illustrates by gather up his hair at the nape of his neck). Someone else in the shop says to him, “Are you really sure you want to….” just as the barber lops of the hank of hair. I say, “Well, I certainly hope that is what you wanted; too late now!” He laughs and I realize it’s the character of Eric from the HBO show “True Blood”. This one’s easy. Mr. B and I watched an episode of “True Blood” last night. The character of Eric has been figuring prominently the last few episodes.

2. We get the check for the rent of our townhouse minus $61.00. Enclosed with the check is an invoice for shelves built out on the back deck. The invoice indicates that the tenants had the work done and paid for it but wanted the amount they’d paid deducted from their monthly rent. I hit the roof and call the management company. They say, “Oh, we’re happy that you called because the tenants are doing some landscaping, which means they’ll have to increase the watering time and they want you to donate some money to the cause”. I fume. This dream probably because a) we’re in the midst of arranging to have new flooring installed in the upstairs bathroom in the townhouse and b) we recently had a run-around with the PMC for not doing more due diligence when the tenant wanted something done.

3. I’m with my (ex) husband in a big meeting hall. He keeps asking me if I will go do “something” that I think he should be doing, not me. We sit down and he starts counting the number of people in the room, as well as everyone’s gender, race, age group, etc. I have no idea why he’s doing this and it’s irritating me. He counts the people in our row, including us, and says to me, “Remember your number!” He assigns 16 to him and 17 to me and then goes on counting down the row. When he’s done, he says, “What is your number?” and I tell him. He gets mad at me and says, “No! You are 22!” We argue a bit but I realize he’s an idiot so I give up and stop paying attention to him. For whatever reason, I occasionally dream that I am still married to my ex husband. Almost always, the situations we are in are irritating and/or upsetting. I haven’t quite been able to figure out why these dreams occur, especially since it’s been over 10 years since we were divorced/I’ve seen him. The only possibility I can arrive at is he may pop up in my dreams after Mr. B and I have had a disagreement.

4. I am at some sort of cocktail reception. It is outside. There are many people I know there; many that I do not. I get a glass of dry rose from the cash bar. Someone tells me that this is an excellent rose. I walk away and arrive at a table full of people I know; my friend Peri, a few ex co-workers from TRW, and a few that I don’t. Someone is asking someone else how they ever managed the change of climate from city A to city B. I want to chime in about how different the weather in Colorado Springs was from Los Angeles. But, no one will let me get a word in edgewise. At one point, I’ve set my glass of wine on the ground. Peri accidentally knocks it over. I say, “Peri, you knocked over my wine!” She sort of shrugs at me (she’s in the midst of the conversation). I wander back over to the cash bar to get another glass of the dry rose. When I get there, the bottle they’d poured my first glass from is nowhere in sight. I ask about it; the person behind the bar looks like she has no clue what I’m talking about. I look behind her and see a different variety of dry rose. Pointing at it, I say, “I’ll take a glass of that”. She nods. I look around me while she’s getting my glass of wine, taking in all of the people milling around and talking to one another. When I turn back, there is a man there opening up a bottle of white wine; it’s actually one of those cheap “jug o’ wine” types. I’m not sure who would want that wine. As I’m watching him, he pushes it towards me and says, “That’ll be $45”. I stare at him. “For what?” “For this bottle of wine you ordered”. “I didn’t want that”, I say. “I told her”, I look behind him and see the original bar person and point at her, “I told her that I wanted dry rose”. He looks perplexed. “Well, I opened up this bottle so you have to take it”. I am getting mad and say with no little irritation, “That is NOT a bottle of wine; that is a jug of cheap crap. I would never have asked for that, and, anyway, no way is it worth $45!” The woman sidles up next to him and says to him in a lowered voice, “She’s lying! She drank her other glass of wine so fast that she’s decided she wants a jug of it now. She’s lying!” I shriek at her some exploitative and lunge at her in a threatening way. I have absolutely no idea what this one means, other than I am perhaps angry about something so had to find an outlet (yelling/lunging at the woman bar tender). I’ve been talking to Peri rather frequently of late, which is probably why she makes a cameo.

5. I’m in a car driving through a parking garage. It’s quite dark and I can barely see where I am going. For whatever reason, I start to back up but then find that I cannot stop. Then, the car starts spinning around in circles and all I can do is sit there and hope I don’t hit something. This is one of my reoccurring dreams and I know damn well what it means; that there is something going on in my life that I cannot control and I’m helpless to do anything about it.

6. I’m sitting in a dentist’s chair. I am explaining to the dentist, who happens to be someone I’ve never seen before in my life, which doesn’t help with my anxiety, that one particular tooth , my far back right bottom molar, has a huge, old filling in it that is about to come out. I’m telling him so that he won’t use that damn scraping tool on it. He leans close to my face, I think so that he can look at it, but instead of looking at it, he kisses me. As he’s kissing me, I wake up to find it’s morning; and Mr. B is leaning over me to give me a kiss before he gets out of bed. Easy one. I had to go to the dentist and I was worried about that tooth being prodded. Added bonus, though, of having the end of the dream morph into reality!

By the way, I do keep a dream journal; or, at least, a record of some of the more interesting dreams I’ve had. I keep thinking one of these days, they may be fodder for a story, or a series of short stories, or, a scene in a story. Who knows? They say dream are a vehicle for your subconscious mind to tell you conscious mind something important.

Hmmm.

Mrs. B